What is it all about?

This investment is developing a comprehensive manual for sweetpotato growers on pre-and post-harvest best practices for reducing skin loss in Australian commercial production systems. This work will contribute to increased profitability and sustainability for Australian sweetpotato growers through quality improvement and innovation in sweetpotato growing systems.

The research team is working closely with growers to collect data on field characteristics, production practices, environmental factors, and post-harvest practices to validate the role of nutrients and identify management and environmental variables that contribute to skin loss.

This investment builds on previous work conducted by researchers in Australia and the USA through the levy-funded project Investigation of skin hardening and splitting disorders in sweetpotatoes (PW18001). Among other outputs, this project recommended further investigation into the possible role of nutrients and confounding environmental variables as an area of future investment in reducing skin loss.